Well completions that need sand control involve a series of screens with an isolation packer above and a crossover tool that extends through a bore in the packer mandrel that allows gravel slurry to be delivered through the tubing and ultimately into the annular space around the screens as the carrier fluid returns to the surface through the crossover tool and up the outer annulus above the production packer. The path for the delivered gravel slurry is through a first series of ports to get out through the tubing and then into an annular space defined around the tubing by the packer skirt or lower extension assembly. The slurry then exits ports in the packer skirt to get to the annulus around the screens in the producing zone. The erosive nature of the gravel slurry causes excessive wear at the ports both at the tubing and at the packer skirt opening.
Prior efforts at controlling such damage from erosion included placing of hardened inserts in openings in softer metal components to protect the edges of the openings in the softer metal as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,491,097. Earlier a hardened sleeve with ports that overlay ports in a weaker surrounding housing were used to prevent erosion of the openings in the surrounding housing as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,636,691. Other solutions attempted to configure the flowing stream into a circular or helical pattern to reduce the erosion from impact of slurry that exited ports in a housing. This feature can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 7,185,704. Other designs used a pivoting baffle plate that responded to slurry flow stream impact to redirect it away from an opposing casing wall as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 7,559,357. Other designs to reduce erosion involved a spinning member that received impact of the slurry flow and was caused to spin to take the energy out of the flowing slurry stream while protecting the housing wall behind the spinning member as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,096,946. A stationary component with a spiral ridge or projection to induce swirl in the slurry flow is shown in US Publication 20090301710 A1.
Some of the offered designs in the past had moving parts that presented mechanical reliability issues in slurry service. Others put openings in hardened sleeves or hardened inserts directly adjacent to openings in the softer metal housings in an effort to protect the edges of the softer metal by making smaller holes in the hardened sleeve or inserts in the openings in the wall of the softer metal. This also caused resistance to flow so that higher slurry velocities occurred or the drift diameter through the tool was reduced. To avoid the issues with the above described prior designs, the present invention seeks to provide in a design with no moving parts a path for the slurry that redirects its flow direction in the course of spacing apart the soft metal components from the hardened flowpath that reorients the slurry stream. By getting the slurry to travel along the insert in a nearly parallel orientation, the housing walls are protected from any severe erosion as opposed to the prior efforts described above where the slurry exited in intimate contact with the edges of openings in the softer metal of a surrounding housing. Applications for a crossover housing and a subsequent outlet to an annular space around the screens are contemplated. These and other aspects of the present invention will become more readily apparent to those skilled in the art from a review of the description of the preferred embodiment and the associated drawings while appreciating that the full scope of the invention is determined by the appended claims.